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The only reason the EU would force Greece to leave the euro is to punish it

Date: July 2, 2015 – 12:34AM

~ Clive Crook

In my more than 30 years writing about politics and economics, I have never before witnessed such an episode of sustained, self-righteous, ruinous and dissembling incompetence — and I’m not talking about Alexis Tsipras and Syriza. As the damage mounts, the effort to rewrite the history of the European Union’s abject failure over Greece is already underway. Pending a fuller post-mortem, a little clarity on the immediate issues is in order.
On Monday, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said at a news conference that he’d been betrayed by the Greek government.

A woman passes a banner supporting the No vote to the upcoming referendum in Athens. Photo: AP
The creditor institutions, he said, had shown flexibility and sought compromise. Their most recent offer involved no wage cuts, he emphasized, and no pension cuts; it was a package that created “more social fairness”. Mr. Tsipras had misled Greeks about what the creditors were asking. The talks were getting somewhere. Agreement on this package could have been reached “easily” if Mr. Tsipras hadn’t collapsed the process early on Saturday by calling a referendum.
What an outrageous passel of distortion. Since these talks began five months ago, both sides have budged, but Mr. Tsipras has given vastly more ground than the creditors. In particular, he was ready to accede to more fiscal austerity — a huge climb-down on his part. True, the last offer requires a slightly milder profile of primary budget surpluses than the creditors initially demanded; nonetheless, it still calls for severely (and irrationally) tight fiscal policy.
In contrast, the creditors have refused to climb down on the question of including debt relief in the current talks, absurdly insisting that this is an issue for later. On Tuesday, Mr. Tsipras made his most desperate attempt yet to bring the issue forward.
Far from expressing any desire to compromise, dominant voices among the creditors — notably German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who often seemed to be calling the shots — have maintained throughout that there is nothing to discuss. The program already in place had to be completed, and that was that.
Yes, the program had failed. No, it wouldn’t achieve debt sustainability. Absolutely, it was pointlessly grinding down Greek living standards even further. What did that have to do with it?
Juncker says the last offer made no demand for wage cuts. Really? The offer says the “wage grid” should be modernised, including “decompressing the [public sector] wage distribution”. On the face of it, decompressing involves cuts. If the creditors were calling for public-sector wages to be decompressed upward perhaps they should have made this clear. Regardless, the increases in value-added taxes demanded by the creditors mean lower real wages, public and private alike. As for no pension cuts, the creditors called for phasing out new early-retirement penalties and the so-called social solidarity payment for the poorest pensioners. Those are cuts.
The creditors called for a lot else, too. Remember that the Greek economy is on its knees. Living standards have collapsed and the unemployment rate is 25 per cent. Now read the offer document, and see if you think the advance in “social fairness” that Juncker stressed at his news conference shines through.
But I haven’t mentioned the biggest distortion of all. Noticing for the first time that Greece has EU citizens within its borders, Juncker addressed them directly on the subject of the July 5 referendum. Greeks will be asked whether they accept the offer presented by the creditors – an offer, by the way, that the creditors say no longer stands. “No [to the offer that no longer exists] would mean that Greece is saying no to Europe,” Juncker explained. President Francois Hollande of France clarified: The vote would determine “whether the Greeks want to stay in the euro zone”.
Nonsense. There’s no doubt that Greeks want to stay in the euro system – though I find it increasingly difficult to see why. If Greece leaves the system, it won’t be because Greeks decide to leave; it will be because Europe decides to kick them out.
This isn’t just semantics. There’s no reason, in law or logic, why a Greek default necessitates an exit from the euro. The European Central Bank pulls this trigger by choosing – choosing, please note – to withhold its services as lender of last resort to the Greek banking system. That is what it did this week. That is what shut the banks and, in short order, will force the Greek authorities to start issuing a parallel currency in the form of IOUs.
A truly independent European Central Bank, willing to do whatever it takes to defend the euro system, could have announced that it would keep supplying Greek banks with liquidity. If the Greek banks are deemed in due course to be insolvent (which hasn’t happened yet), that doesn’t have to trigger an exit, either. Europe has the wherewithal and a bank-rescue mechanism that would allow the banks to be taken over and recapitalized. These options are foreclosed because the supposedly apolitical European Central Bank has let Europe’s finance ministers use it as a hammer to extract fiscal concessions from Greece.
Nobody ever imagined that a government default in Europe would dictate ejection from the euro zone. The very possibility would have been correctly recognized as a fatal defect in the design of the system.
If the Greeks vote no, a Greek exit is a possible and even likely consequence. But if it happens, the reason won’t be that Greece chose to go. The reason will be that the European Union and its politicized central bank chose to inflict exit as punishment.

From the women of Steriu who gathered
at the monastery of Holy Loucas
to decorate the Epitaphios and
from all the dirge singers who
stayed in vigil until Holy Saturday night
who thought of — as sweetly as they sang ! —
that, under the flowers and the shimmering
enamel it was the flesh of dead Adonis
that went through such excruciating pain?
Because even pain
was among the roses and the Epitaphios lament
and the breaths of spring that
came through the church door grew new wings
from the miracle of resurrection and
the wounds of Christ resembling anemonies
by his feet covered with flowers and
their exquisite, their strong fragrance!

But during the night of the same Saturday
when they all lit their candles from
the one at the holy sanctuary to
the back end of the church, like a wave
the light reached the front door, they all
shivered when they heard among the
“Christ’s risen!” a sudden burst of a voice
yelling: “Georgena, Vangelis!”

There he was, the pride of the village, Vangelis
the dream of every girl, Vangelis
who they all thought was killed in the war; he stood
straight up by the church front door, with
a wooden leg, he wouldn’t come inside
the church, as they all with candles in their
hands looked at him, the dancer who shook
the threshing floors of Steriu, once his face
once his leg as if nailed on the threshold
and couldn’t come further in!

Then, let this verse be my witness—
this simple and truthful verse —
from the pew I was standing I
saw the mother to take off her kerchief
and dash with her head down and
embrace the leg, the wooden leg of the soldier —
and as I saw it my verse writes it here,
this simple and truthful verse —
and she cried out deep from her heart
the yell: “my jewel…my Vangelis!”

And let this verse be my witness
this simple and truthful verse —
they all stood behind her, all who had gathered
since the night of Holy Thursday,
with lullabies to lament for the dead
Adonis, hidden in the flowers, now
they burst out along with the mother’s
yell reaching to the pew I stood
and covered my eyes like a peplos!

The source of the Greek version of this post : ~www.cantfus.blogspot.gr

BIOGRAPHY

Sikelianos was born in Lefkada where he spent his childhood. In 1900 he entered the Law School of Athens but did not graduate.

The next years he travelled extensively and devoted himself to poetry. In 1907, he married American born Eva Palmer. They married in America and moved to Athens in 1908. During that period, Sikelianos came in contact with Greek intellectuals, and in 1909 he published his first collection of poems, Alafroískïotos (The Light-Shadowed), which had an immediate impact and was recognized by critics as an important work. He also befriended fellow writer Nikos Kazantzakis, and in 1914 they spent forty days on Mount Athos, visiting most of the monasteries there and living the life of ascetics. The following year they embarked on a pilgrimage through Greece.
In May 1927, with the support of his wife, Eva Palmer-Sikelianos, Sikelianos held the Delphic Festival as part of his general effort towards the revival of the “Delphic Idea”. Sikelianos believed that the principles which had shaped the classic civilisation, if re-examined, could offer spiritual independence and serve as a means of communication among people.

During the German occupation, he became a source of inspiration to the Greek people, especially through his speech and poem that he recited at the funeral of the poet Kostis Palamas.

In 1949, he was a Nobel Prize for Literature candidate.

He died accidentally in Athens from inadvertently drinking Lysol after having requested Nujol (a medicine) in 1951.

that everything suited its place
nothing jutted out of position
but the palm tree
in sandy corners of the earth
that needed direction when
early in life I discovered
my secret love: the sea
dark blue and merciless
inviting and ardent punisher
of sins told and petrified

when the goddess chose
of to make my cenotaph and
to erect my statue that
spoke of greatness
true demagogue that I was
with the vague smile
upon my face

she then placed a wilted daffodil
and a fiery red carnation
over my heart
it was a sad day when
I drank water diaphanous to be
it was a diaphanous day
when I vanished
in the azure and
with my legs I strode freely
over my statue’s joy

At the edge of the village we arrived at the half-lit
house with the small yard and the bloomed jasmine.
The air smelled of love undone, as though all evil was
forgiven. Before we entered we heard the potter’s wheel
singing circular notes and joyous messages that with
intensity reflected on our wild youth.
Methodically the wheel transcended mud into exquisite
vessels. Palms pressed, fingers morphed birds and
miracles; suddenly the world gained its meaning like
the sun in the thought of a cloudy day.
An amphora, a cylix, and Ubermensch closed
the curtains that creation wouldn’t escape His movement
as easy as the potter’s. Two Ubermenschen and a hovel
full of beautiful words.